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When AR professionals consider using Twitter to interact with analysts they often shy away from the activity based on their perception of adding yet another task to an already heavy workload. There is even the perception that following an analyst using a personal Twitter handle (e.g., @daveeckert or @carterlusher) sets the expectation that the AR professional should be interacting with the analyst and not just observing their tweets. While this is not an unreasonable concern, our experience is the effective use of Twitter rarely has a large workload impact (see Analyze social media traffic of analysts to determine your workload).

One way for AR programs with two or more staff members to get around the perceived workload issue is to set up an AR team handle (e.g., www.twitter.com/vendor_AR) and then switch support duties periodically (e.g., on Mondays). Then only one team member at a time is monitoring analysts’ Twitter traffic and posting appropriate tweets about the vendor. This approach also has the advantage of building the AR team’s brand with the analysts.

SageCircle Technique:

Set up an AR team handle on Twitter – select a name which reflects it as a team-branded handle.

Create a schedule of Twitter responsibility

Develop a very, very simple process for determining when and how to notify the team when top analysts tweet about potentially important topics

Incorporate a verbal report of Twitter activity into regular team calls. This maintains accountability.

Bottom Line: Dividing the duties to maintain an AR presence on Twitter is one method for lessening the concern about any extra workload associated with Twitter. However, care has to be taken that the person on Twitter duty devotes sufficient attention to make sure the team’s presence on Twitter does not fade from the analysts’ minds.

Question: Do you have a team Twitter handle? Is this handle in addition to or instead of personal handles? How do you use the team handle?

3 Responses

Great conversation starter – at Metia, we’ve gone the route of having both personal Twitter accounts and a team account (@MetiaAR) – with shared login details we maintain the account between the team. While the team account is a great way of communicating with a wide audience of our followers, we feel it is important to keep up the interaction with individual analysts via our personal accounts – this can’t be achieved by a faceless group Twitter account so well. Another key feature of our group Twitter account is to act as a pointer to our personal accounts – you’ll see how we have our personal handles on the left of the profile page.